Tag Archives: Word count

NaNoWrimo – second week blues

ImageSo remember how a few days ago I said that I had gagged and tied my inner editor in the basement? Well, she escaped and returned with a vengeance. Or maybe it’s just the dreaded second week of NaNo blues.

I woke up yesterday absolutely hating my novel. The plot was not progressing fast enough, the characters were wandering all over the place, but most of all I had the feeling that every single word I had written up until now was absolute tripe. I sad down in front of my screen, opened Scrivener and couldn’t force myself to write. I worked through it, forced myself to put in my usual daily 1700 words, but I hated every single one of them.

So I thought I would use today’s Writing Marathon to power through this block. I even signed up for twitter to participate at the sprints at #NaNoWordSprints… It worked. Well, kinda sorta in a sideways kinda way. I manged to write 2500 words, but instead of progressing with the plot, my Main Character decided that now was the time to sit down and bare his soul and tell his back-story to the enraptured audience of one aka yours truly. I tried to nudge him towards action and getting on with the case on hand, but he just ignored me.

So I now have 2500 words of back story that might or might not make it into the final draft. But on the plus side, I think I managed to lock my inner editor in the bathroom, so onward with the story!

How is everyone doing with their novels so far?

NaNoWriMo – half way through week one.

ImageThe first week of NaNoWriMo is not over yet but I have broken the 10k words mark today. That’s one fifth of the goal done. I think I will allow myself a glass of wine tonight to celebrate.

Between bouts of frantic writing this weekend, I have noticed several things.

First of all, tying and gaging my inner editor and shoving her in a dark closet for the duration of NaNo had been strangely liberating. I didn’t realize how much fun it would be to just put words on paper (or on the computer screen in my case) without worrying about bad grammar, spelling or lack of style. Yes, it might look like a smoking pile of manure, but it moves the story forward, and anything is better than a blank page. Manure I can work with later and grow beautiful polished prose with, blank – not so much.

Another thing that I learned about my writing – having a pretty good idea of where your story goes and outlining it works wonders. All the other (unsuccessful) attempts at writing a novel started with me having a wonderful idea and a vague picture of the main characters. And I would sit down and happily punch words in for a week or two. Then I would get lost with no idea where my story is supposed to go, or hit a roadblock, or just lose interest and move on to a new shiny idea.

In this case I spent the entire month of October thinking about my story. I wrote the main idea, I thought about the beginning and the ending, I even sat down and wrote a more or less detailed outline. I dived into my world and tried to figure out as much about it as I could. I cornered my characters in tights spaces and interrogated them. So when November 1 arrived, I knew my world and my characters and I had a pretty good idea where my story was going. And guess what – I am still very much in love with the story.

So lesson learned – do not jump right into writing, let the idea sit and mature, poke at it for a week or two and see if what hatches is worth writing about.

Oh and I also found an excellent book by Timothy Hallinan called Finish Your Novel, there is a lot of very good advice and encouragement here, so I definitely recommend it to all aspiring novelists.

NaNoWriMo – on your mark, ready, go!!!!

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So November 1 is officially here and NaNo madness has began. All the brave (and some would say crazy) souls participating this year will have exactly 30 days to produce 50 000 words of text in order to win. And I need to point out that 50k is not the limit, if our novel will be over that amount, feel free to write more (if you can). You also don’t need to have finished your novel by end of November in order to win. But still… 50 000 words is a lot, it really is. In fact it’s like a very scary mountain of words looming in front of me.

But no need to panic, there is a way to accomplish that without a psychotic break at the end (I hope) – eat the elephant in small bites. 50 000 words is 1667 words per day if you write every day in November. That doesn’t look as scary anymore, does it? Well, to me it still kinda does, since my usual daily production is more in the 500 – 800 words range. So I devised this plan that would help me reach my goals – I took a critical look at my usual work day and found out that I have three possibilities to write through the day: in the morning before I go to work, during lunch and late at night before bed (I am lucky to have a laptop and a convenient plug next to my bed). If I write 600 words in each of those sessions, I will get 1800 words per day – that is plenty enough to reach 50k! Now I just need to stick to the plan…

As far as day one is concerned, I think I am doing pretty well. I have 1700 words so far and that’s only after two sessions. I was so scared that I would stare at a blank page and just freeze, but words just kinds spilled out. Planning on using the weekend to up my world count. The goal is to be at 7000 total by Monday. We will see, we will see.

Any other Wrimos out there? How did your first day go?